by Iain Reid
I look down at the photo. It shows a young woman, maybe in her early to mid-twenties. She’s in what I assume is a full nursing uniform of the time and is seated at a plain wooden desk. Behind her is a stack of files on a shelf and a bulletin board mounted on the wall. She has a pencil in her right hand, and whoever took the picture has interrupted her solitude, disrupted whatever she’s writing. Maybe a diary entry, or study notes. Maybe she’s writing a letter.
It’s difficult to decipher the lighting in the room. I think it looks dark. I imagine it was taken at night. Somehow it feels late. She looks like she’d prefer not to have her picture taken, like it’s an inconvenience. If there were a thought bubble above her head it would read, “Hurry up.”
The nurse is smiling blithely, though, until the photographer leaves her be. Then she can return to her work.
THURSDAY
8:43 a.m.
I’M ONLY JUST inferring. She’s trying to tell me she’s waiting without actually telling me. Instead of calling through the door, or even knocking, Grandma’s been coughing, tepidly, for about three minutes, off and on. She doesn’t want to pester me. I’ve realized this the past three days. Grandma’s preferred presence as a guest is to blend into the walls. She’s ready for the bathroom, but only when it’s free.
I’ve been in here for a while. I splash a fifth or sixth handful of warm water over my face and wipe my hands on my shirt (which dampens the front of my shirt but doesn’t fully dry my hands).
Outside the door, waiting with Grandma, is another day. Like a small plastic object you find at the back of your kitchen junk drawer, it should be used for something, but I can’t decide what. I also know I can’t just ignore or discard it, like I could if alone.
“Is that you, Grandma?”
“Ohhh.” She sounds surprised. “Good morning, dear. Yup, it’s only me.”
“Good morning. I’ll be out in a second.” I plant my face in the small green towel hanging beside the sink for a proper dry.
“Not to worry, there’s no rush.”
I open the door. Grandma’s standing arms akimbo, dressed in a red sweater, black pants, and her dark blue Hush Puppies shoes. Her smartly assembled outfit can’t hide her unwell complexion. She’s elegant, but more indisposed than yesterday. She looks smaller, shorter. Her nose is as red as her sweater.
“How are you feeling today? How’s the cold?”
She sniffs through deeply congested nostrils before waving my question away. “Better, I think. I’m on the mend, that’s for sure.”
“Really, are you sure? Did you sleep okay?”
“Yes, you don’t have to ask me. I always do. And anyway, I’m certainly much better than yesterday. I’ll be completely back to normal by tomorrow.”
Yesterday she said she was fine, that it sounded much worse than it was. This morning she’s telling me she’s much better than yesterday. She sounds worse. I’m flummoxed by her staunch stoicism.
“I’m glad you’re wearing your warm sweater today. It looks colder outside. It’s a nice colour. The red suits you.” Only for shirts, not chapped noses.
“You think? I usually prefer blue.”
“Yeah, it looks great.” And it does, but this is also adding to the pressure of coming up with exciting and interesting things to do today. If Grandma was greeting me each morning in her nightgown and housecoat, with hair askew, we’d be equals. I’d at least be able to suggest we stick closer to my typical routine of staying in my apartment.
“Have you looked outside yet? I was just looking out the window.” She taps my shoulder on her way into the bathroom. “It’s not raining.”
I leave Grandma to her ablutions. I find the kitchen as I left it. I recognize the crumbs from my late-night peanut butter sandwich. How can we break our fast this morning? Something other than toast and condiment would be nice.
I stand in front of the open fridge, scratching the back of my thigh. I fling cupboards open and then closed. It seems like I spend the bulk of my money on food. And yet, I never have anything to eat. Ever.
I move back to the fridge again. It’s identical to the way it was the first time. I never omit this immediate follow-up fridge examination, as if in the time it takes to open and close the cereal cupboard, that jar of expired gherkins will be replaced by a fresh strawberry Danish dusted with icing sugar. I have no conscious memory of purchasing these inedible gherkins. I can’t recall a time in my life ever enjoying (or even consuming) a gherkin. I honestly don’t know what a gherkin is. Yet there they are, winking at me from their lot between the mayo and mint jelly.
I shut the fridge. Toast and cheese isn’t the end of the world, I suppose.
The toaster’s elements are glowing orange and the slices are somewhere between bread and toast when Grandma joins me in the kitchen. The kitchen fills with the unappetizing scent of burntness. Crumbs or an old crust must be stuck at the bottom. “Good morning, again,” I say.
“Well, good morning, again.”
She steps past me to the window. I’m not sure what she’s looking at but she’s doing it purposefully. I set our plates and knives on the table. She stays by the window, peering outside. She’s looking for something. When the toast pops, Grandma turns. “I thought I could smell toast. I hoped I could. I do love my toast.”
“That’s good.” Because that’s all I ever give you. “We both love our toast.”
I set the coffee to brew before carrying a tray of toast to the table, where Grandma has seated herself in her usual chair. “I can’t believe I’m hungry again after our great supper last night. But I am.”
“Me too,” I say.
I unlid the butter dish and set the cheese plate beside Grandma. “What else do you need, Grandma? Would you like some jam . . . maybe some gherkins or something?”
“No, this looks wonderful. I’m fine.”
We’re dressing our toast when she pauses in mid-spread and looks up from her plate. “Did you have any funny dreams last night?”
“No, not really. None that I can remember. Did you?” I take my first bite.
“I think I did. But I can’t remember, either. I can never remember the dreams I want to. But I think it had something to do with when I started nursing, or it took place around that time or something.”
Grandma finishes her prep while I force myself to slow down my eating by taking smaller bites and actually chewing.
“So, do you remember why you got into nursing in the first place?”
“You mean in my dream?”
“No, I’m curious about why you did it in real life.”
“When I got into nursing initially, it was because I wanted to be a psych nurse. But it didn’t work out like that.”
“How come?”
“Well, I was picked with another nurse in my class to be in the operating room. That sort of changed everything.”
“Psych nurse to the operating room? That’s a significant shift. Were you happy to do it?”
“It was very different. But it was an opportunity, so I took it.” She pauses to spread melting butter across her toast. “I liked it. I enjoyed being part of the surgeries. It was thrilling. After graduating, I was hired to the staff at Winnipeg General. I loved my job.”
“So how did you end up at working at the barracks?”
“It’s funny, it was so long ago, but I can clearly remember the day. I’d been working a long shift. It had been busy. Near the end, one of the surgeons came by and asked the supervising nurse if she would consider joining Fort Osborne Barracks. I was cleaning up, putting some instruments away, and could hear the conversation. She was telling him how she didn’t want to. She had too many things going on. She was engaged to be married. She was planning on having a family. That was her priority, I guess.”
I finish my first piece and lean back in my chair. Grandma’s toast is fully bu
ttered and waiting. She’s yet to take a bite.
“And then she turns to me and says, ‘But she wants to join.’ The surgeon walked over and asked me if that was true. I told him, yes, I’d had my name in to join since before I’d graduated. I knew him from working at the hospital, and we always got on, so when he heard I was interested, he put my name forward. It wasn’t long at all before I’d been accepted into the barracks and the army.”
“Did you know you wanted to be in the army?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’d thought a lot about it, to tell you the truth. But, yes, by that time, it just seemed like the thing to do. Iain, it was an adventure to me. I was young, I wanted to travel, and let’s be honest, times were different back then. The world was very different. We knew what was happening in Europe. We knew it wasn’t good. So of course I was going to do it.”
“Let me get us some coffee,” I say, retrieving the pot and two mugs.
“Thanks, dear. I’d love one.” She picks up her toast but continues with her story. “My dad had joined the army during the First World War, the same year he arrived in Canada. It was the Canadian Army he joined, too, even though he’d just arrived. I figured I’d do the same. Why wouldn’t I? The other thing was the pay. Nurses were very underpaid in those days. I wasn’t going to be making much money. But in the army, nurses were automatically given the rank of officer. This meant a significant increase in pay compared to just staying on at the hospital. So, I guess there were lots of reasons why it happened the way it did.”
She accepts her mug and takes a sip, nodding her approval.
“And it also had to do with Donald, the one I used to shoot pucks at.”
She offers a look that I’m not sure I’ve seen before, a coy earnestness.
“Donald joined up with the air force. He’d obviously never flown a plane before. The only training they gave him was a pamphlet to read. Imagine that: flying a plane, in a war, after reading an instructional pamphlet.”
“If it all happened today, I bet you would have been a doctor, though.” This doesn’t come out the way I wanted. I mean it as a compliment but it sounds more like a slight.
“I liked being a nurse. That’s what I wanted to be.”
“But the military part. And the war that was going on. And going overseas in a ship. And all that. You didn’t even know where you were going. Weren’t you worried about that? You must have been scared.”
Grandma now refocuses on me directly. I’ve taken history courses and have read many books about many different wars. I’ve studied strategy, battlefields, and the philosophy of war. But how frightening is it to be in one? We’ve been nibbling our toast and sipping our coffee as we chat. She sets down her coffee now. Her expression changes to a veneer of unobscured implacability.
It’s another look I’m unfamiliar with, a look that affects me physically. I feel myself sitting up in my chair. Her eyes no longer show her usual cordiality but a toughness bordering on malice. “Iain, I was never scared. Not once.”
I don’t think I would have been able to say the same, but I believe her completely.
“I was never worried about anything I did or was involved in. I just never really worried too much.” Again she pauses. “But I was always concerned for Donald. I often thought about him. I just hoped if something were to happen, it would be to me, but not to him, not Donald. He was my little brother, after all, and he was so young.”
She never would have brought this up on her own. The fact that she sailed across the ocean into a war and was never scared. It’s a vital piece of information for me to learn about her. I never knew it until now. It never came up. I never asked.
“Huh” and “yeah” is what I offer in return. There’s obviously more I’d like to say. Maybe if I think about it for a while I’ll be able to tell her how impressed I am. It’s not really about being impressed, though. That seems to grossly simplify what I feel. We turn back to our breakfast and eat in silence.
It’s Rufus who takes our attention from the food. Rufus is what she must have been looking for this morning before she sat down. He’s at the door, looking in. Rufus, my neighbour’s cat.
“I just had a feeling he’d come by this morning. I saw him outside last night, when I was up to use the bathroom,” she says.
Rufus is a big black feline with whiskers that branch out from his snout like pipe cleaners. If Grandma saw him, he was likely outside all night. He’s wet and desperately wants in.
I feel bad, sure, but am also reluctant. He’s not only big but aggressive. He tends to nip. He’s not my cat, and it is very tricky to get him back out once he’s in. He makes me feel uneasy in the same way a rabid muskrat would.
“We should let him in for a bit, right?” says Grandma, standing up. “How can we resist those eyes looking in?”
“Well . . .”
It’s easy to resist — just shift ninety degrees in your seat and turn your back to the door.
Grandma starts touching the glass where Rufus is sniffing, as if she’s visiting him in cat prison. Which is where he should be. It’s then I remember, for the first time the entire trip, that Grandma has a cat of her own. She adopted Pippa early this year. I haven’t asked about Pippa at all. “Grandma, I totally forgot. Are you missing Pippa since you’ve been away?”
“I guess I am. Sure. She’ll be fine, though. Have I told you what she’s been doing to me lately?”
“No.”
Grandma can’t restrain her smile now that she’s talking about her own cat. “She makes me take a nap every afternoon. Sometime after lunch she’ll start swirling around my feet until I go and lie down on the couch with my blanket. Then she climbs up on top of me and we both fall asleep. I’ve never been much of a napper” — she laughs — “but then again, I’ve never been a cat person, either. I always liked animals but never thought I’d have a cat.”
I’m staring at Rufus. Those whiskers are way too long. He lost his tail a few years back, after an accident. I think he was hit by a car. It’s all very sad, but he carries on untroubled. I think it’s affected me more. The lack of tail, that furry yet bare rump, continues to unsettle me. I wouldn’t be able to nod off if he was in the same room, let alone lying across my chest.
“When we wake up from our nap, we always have a little chat. Lately, I’ve been asking Pippa who’s older, me or her. She’s getting a little grey beard. I still think I might have her beat. But just barely. She’s around eighteen or nineteen, which must be around ninety-two in human years. I think we’re both surprised we’re still around. Neither has many naps left in us, I don’t think.”
I turn away from Rufus. “Are you surprised, Grandma? I mean, living so long.” It’s something I’ve been meaning to ask her for a while.
“I’m amazed, Iain. No one in my family has ever lived this long, not even close. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I never ever would have guessed I’d be around into my nineties. No way.”
“So, do you think a lot about dying, then?”
“You know, I don’t. At least not with any despair. I’m not scared of dying. And here’s the thing: it will happen when it happens. Did you ever hear of the time I woke up beside the land mine?”
“No.”
“It was in Sicily. A fellow I knew had a Jeep and offered to take me for a ride. We ended up going farther than we should have. We lost track of time. It got dark and we were still out. So we decided we’d better stop for the night, sleep on the side of the road, and go back first thing in the morning.”
“And did you?”
“We did. We slept outside. But at dawn I woke to him grabbing my arm. He was very serious and talking slowly. He was telling me not to move. He helped me up. For the entire night I’d been asleep right near a mine. We hadn’t seen it in the dark.”
She swivels from the door and bends down to the bottom drawer, where I keep
the flour, sugar, and oatmeal. She opens it and takes something out, something I didn’t know was in there. She must have brought the bag of cat treats from home. I must have mentioned Rufus to Grandma.
“You know, I always thought George would live longer than me. We both did. He never would have believed I’d last this long,” she says. “So what do you think, should we let him in?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer but opens the door a crack. Rufus sniffs his way in and curls around her feet. She scratches his back along his spine. “What a good boy . . . you’re such a good boy,” she says.
“Watch out he doesn’t bite you,” I say, taking a step back behind Grandma. “Sometimes, you know, he bites.”
“No, no, he won’t, he’s fine. I brought something with me in case I saw him.” She shakes a pile of the tiny brown pellets onto the floor. Grandma watches in undiluted satisfaction as Rufus scarfs up the salmon-flavoured morsels like he needs them to live.
12:38 p.m.
“WELL, LOOKS LIKE we’ll need to kill some time. Sorry.”
“Oh, that’s okay. How much time do we need to kill?”
“About an hour and a half,” I grumble.
“Okay, an hour and a half.”
We’re sitting in my idling car. I’m watching the exhaust fumes billowing up from behind in the rear-view mirror. We’re at the entrance to the ferry. The one working windshield wiper in its tauntingly nah-nah-nah-boo-boo way is waving back and forth at me on top speed. I’ve had my greatest moment of inspiration in the past four days. I decided I’d take Grandma over to Wolfe Island.
Wolfe Island is a mostly rural island in Lake Ontario. It’s just south of Kingston, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. It’s a summer destination, for cottagers mostly, as only around a couple of thousand people call the island home year round. It reminds me of Toronto Island, how when you get on it you feel like you’re a long way away from the city you left.
We’d been sitting around after breakfast, sipping second cups of coffee while I read over glossy pamphlets I’d snagged from the tourist office. Each pamphlet was for a different museum.